Week #81 Our Rocky Mountain US Road trip in an RV begins

Last minute plans

After the stress of train strikes getting back from Heathrow on our last US trip, we decided it would be easier to fly from Manchester and get a connecting flight which ironically was nearly £100 each cheaper. Our children live in Manchester so we stayed at Luke’s for the night. It was with much excitement that he rang us at 4pm and said he had been to his local wine shop and they were having a wine tasting evening that night and had offered him reduced priced tickets after a last minute cancellation. It was Fabulous. For just £10 a head we had an amazing evening, tasting 7 different Australian wines from the Turkey Flatt Vineyard in the Barrossa Valley with lots of nibbles and great company. Getting up for an Early flight out of Manchester the next morning was not so great!!

Floods in the Dales

So the summer did return for a couple of weeks in early September and we loved getting out into the hills hiking and cycling. But WOW did the rain return this week in the Dales. We had 2 solid days of rain due to the remnants of hurricane Lee which saw our village almost cut off due to flooding. It was a little worrying seeing the floods levels rise and acres of fields looking more like a lake. The sheer force of the river in the valley was just an awesome sight to see and the waterfalls at Stainforth were so high that it was more like a violent cascade of destruction. September is sees the start of the annual Salmon run up the River Ribble to their spawning grounds, they certainly had their work cut out this week

The joys of long haul flights

We love travel and I do actually like flying, it is something we have not done a lot of since we’ve had the campervan. However, the journey from The Yorkshire Dales to Denver is quite an arduous one. Luckily, all flights were pretty much on schedule and I managed to get a couple of hours sleep on the plane. The in flight entertainment systems these days certainly help with the inevitable boredom of nearly 10 hours in the air and we quite enjoyed catching up on some box sets.

The Rocky Mountain Road Trip adventures begin

Iris was waiting for us at Denver Airport, her flight had landed 3 hours earlier, so it was a long time for her hanging around. The hotel was 35miles to the North, selected as it was close to the Cruise America RV Pick up point. It was 8pm US time when we arrived at the hotel and we all just crashed for the night as that was 3am UK time. Richard is awful with jet lag and only managed a couple of hours sleep.

Picking up the RV was interesting, we couldn’t get an uber to pick us up as the hotel was out of town and we only wanted to go 2.5 miles, so myself and Richard ended up walking along the roadsides that have no pavements in 28 degrees heat. Not the greatest start, but the frustrations soon melted away as we finally reached the parking lot and could see our fun bus for the next 5 weeks.

With a quick stop off to pick up Iris and the luggage, we were off!

According to google it was a 3.5 hour journey to our first stop off at Saratoga, we would need to keep pushing on if we wanted to arrive at the RV site before dark. But first we needed a stop at Walmart to stock up on food, drinks and other essentials such as Duvets (non of us were keen on used sleeping bags) and shampoos.

Taking the slow road

We soon realised that google timings were not going to be accurate driving the gigantic white block on wheels and that we would not make it to the campsite before dark. This was compounded by the fact that google took us on a more direct route through the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forset. It said it was the quickest route by 20 minutes, however it did not say that it was a beautiful drive up to a ski resort on a mountain pass that the RV would not reach speeds of more than 30 mph on for 40 miles! It took us double the time, in the dark. A definite lesson learnt for the rest of the road trip!!

That said, fate was on our side because as we descended, we were rewarded by the most stunning show of the Northern lights dancing in the sky above us, visible even to the naked eye! I have never seen anything like it. We managed to get a few photo’s as we drove along, but could not pull over as there was a row of traffic behind us and no laybys.

Luckily, there were no barriers at the RV park and we drove straight in to our prebooked pitch. From my extensive research we had booked a ‘pull-through’ pitch so we didn’t have to do any reversing. Richard managed to work out the electric hook up in the Dark and connect the water but we left the joys of hooking up the dreaded black waste tanks for another day. We have a rule in the van, no solids in the tank!

Yesterday was a much more leisurely day, we had another 4 hour drive through the high prairies to get us to the foothills of the Grand Teton National Park where we could start our animal spotting and sight seeing in earnest! We have seen quite a selection already, prong horn deer being the most abundant. We did watch some very cute prairie dogs whilst having our lunch and mum spotted a coyote and birds feasting on a dead deer. I spotted a bald eagle swooping in the sky but we are only counting them as ticked off on our list if all 3 of us see them.

The camp ground in Dubois was simply stunning. We were pitched by the river side and were treated to a beautiful sunset over the red rocky cliffs behind us. We managed to have a bbq as the temperatures are still pretty high for late September in the Rockies and the skies are blue. Lets hope that continues.